Distribution equilibrium of mercury (II) chloride between water and air applied to flue gas cleaning

Journal article, 2000

In the literature, different values of the distribution coef-ficient K H for HgCl 2 between water and air are present in a range that spans more than 3 orders of magnitude. In order to determine if a waste incineration scrubber solu-tion could become saturated with regard to HgCl 2 , an ac-curate experimental determination of the distribution constant of HgCl 2 at elevated temperatures is needed. In this work, the coefficient has been determined at four dif-ferent temperatures between 10 and 50 °C. The Arrhenius expression obtained is 5.5 x 10 5 x exp[-(8060 ± 2200)/T] with a corresponding enthalpy for the process HgCl 2 (aq)?I HgCl 2 (g) of 67 ± 20 kJ/mole. K H at 293 K was found to be ~5 x 10 -7 atm M -1 , which is in almost perfect agreement with an earlier study. Applying the obtained K H values to waste incineration scrubber conditions shows that no major saturation effect will occur.